Night Time with Sebastien and Eden

"So... are your babies sleeping through the night yet?"

A common and understandable question. As a parent of two 10 week olds, a lot of time and energy goes into thought about my kids' sleeping.

For the last month or so we've done some experimenting with night time schedules. Eden and Sebastien can go fairly long stretches without eating now. (Anywhere between 6 and 10 hours!) Granted, they are not sleeping for those whole stretches of time, but we figure it's a great start so we'll take it. One step at a time.

Ok, so here are a couple of scenarios....

(And somehow they always end up eating around 7pm, when I would prefer 6pm and 9pm. But anyway...)

7pm eat
both totally asleep by 9:30
wake them up to eat at 10pm
sleep from 11pm (ish) until... well usually they grunt and fuss starting around 2:30 or 3:00...but they're not really hungry. they stay in their cribs with frequent help from mom and dad until 4 or maybe even 5am
eat
put both back down, they sleep for an hour or two, wake up fussy until mom lays down with both babies and we all sleep until 9 or even 10am.

7pm eat
both asleep by 9:30
sleep until 3:30am
eat
sleep until 6:30am
eat
mom tries to get them back to bed b/c they're clearly tired, but they grunt and fuss until mom lays down with both babies and we all sleep until 9 or even 10am.

So, yes, I take naps with them a lot of days. Call it survival, or whatever... I call it "family nap time." It might be a bad habit. But seriously, that's a post for another day because my kids are not good day-time sleepers. Unless they're being held. Again, perhaps a bad habit, but it's not for lack of trying and they need their sleep!

We've also tried a couple nights where we let each one determine for themselves when they are going to get up to eat. I don't recommend this. Basically it just means I'm awake feeding or soothing one baby or another all night long. We have also had a couple nights where Adam and I each are in charge of one baby. That wasn't great either. Oh, also... some times one of us will do the night feeding without the other so they can sleep. While that is ok when one of us really needs it, it is so much more difficult to do night feedings alone, most of the time we both get up to feed the babies in the middle of the night.

One more note...if our children could sleep on us all night long, they would easily sleep 12-hour stretches every night. When Sebastien or Eden are so discontent at night that pacies and swaddling and soothing isn't working...yet they aren't really hungry...mom or dad will lay down with them. They then need to be woken up to eat, they are so sound asleep!

So, are they sleeping through the night. They're "not eating" through the night. And there's hope for a future of actual sleeping through the night. So, they're getting there.

p.s. This entire post was written lovingly with one hand.